Wi-Fi Direct is a standard recently released by the Wi-Fi Alliance that specifies a means for devices to negotiate who will function as an Access Point (AP) versus a connecting Station (STA). A Wi-Fi Direct device acting as an AP is called a Group Owner. A Group Owner responds to station probe requests with its Service Set Identifier (SSID) in the same way an AP does so that legacy devices which do not have Wi-Fi Direct support may scan for and connect to a Wi-Fi Direct Group Owner in exactly the same way they would a normal AP. Wi-Fi Direct devices connect easily with each other without requiring a wireless access point. They communicate at typical Wi-Fi speeds for everything from file transfer to internet connectivity.
A Wi-Fi Home Automation Device (HAD) is a device which may be controlled via Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone or access point to change state. It's desirable for many of these devices to be battery operated since consumer electrical connection to power at home is often inconvenient, unappealing, and hazardous. The battery life of an HAD may be significantly enhanced by increasing the amount of time the device sleeps between queries for new commands. This time is referred to as the sleep interval. As the sleep interval of an HAD is increased, its response latency to commands may become too long. For example, most consumers don't want to wait several seconds for lights to turn on when entering a dark room. A method for temporarily decreasing the sleep interval of an HAD when it's most likely a person will want to change its state is therefore desirable. The amount of power that can be saved by a connectionless or unassociated query is significant. An unassociated query typically involves a probe request which is often sent in less than a millisecond followed by a probe response. Probe responses are often received within a few milliseconds so the amount of time the HAD must spend with its receiver on is small. The process of authenticating, associating, and querying a connected device through an access point, on the other hand, can be on the order of several hundreds of milliseconds throughout which the device's receiver must remain on.
As mobile phones with softAP and Wi-Fi Direct functionality become increasingly widespread, consumers will want to be able to directly connect with and control Wi-Fi devices around their home. Mobile phones with softAP (software enabled Access Point) functionality create a wireless hotspot, via emulation as an access point, to enable nearby wireless devices to communicate the internet and with other devices. Home automation devices (HAD) enable consumers to locally or remotely control appliances in their home. Smart Energy devices enable synchronized operation of consumer appliances in such a way to balance electrical distribution demands while saving consumers money on their electric bills. Both fields require that the consumer be able to control a home appliance. Given the installed base of Wi-Fi access points in homes and in mobile phones, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) is a natural technology for these fields. Wi-Fi is an energy efficient technology at higher bit rates. However, the overhead associated with maintaining or reestablishing a connection for a few bytes of data make it less energy efficient at low bit rates. As such, Wi-Fi communication in its standard form is not power efficient and many products based on low power Zigbee solutions are currently being deployed in these fields. Therefore, a more efficient Wi-Fi method and device is needed.